A Cat Always Lands On Its Feet
by Lucillia
Summary: A case in Salem Massachusetts reveals to DiNozzo that McProbie is older than he appears. About three centuries older...
1. Prologe: With a Bit of Magic

The McGees had come to Salem that October to visit Mr. McGee's grandmother who was nearly a century old at that point. It was the first of November 1993, and there had been reports of rioting in the town the night before. Fortunately, according to the news reports, everything seemed to have calmed down at sunrise and Mr. McGee had been able to drink his morning coffee without worry. Well, not on the rioting front, unless one counted the minor riot that looked to be about to break out in the house if the look on his wife's face was anything to judge by.

"Time was that this house was filled with the laughter of children." Mr. McGee's grandmother said wistfully as she sipped her own coffee despite her doctor's numerous warnings about drinking the stuff at her age.

Mrs. McGee's face went colder at that. It was a well known fact in the family that she and her husband had finally given up after twenty years of trying, which had included any number of expensive fertility treatments that had failed.

"Don't worry dear, God will provide." the old woman had said with a smile.

Before Mrs. McGee could go into a rant about what God had provided so far, the phone started ringing. Despite it being a bit rude since it wasn't his house, Mr. McGee picked it up because he was the closest. As he listened to whoever was on the other end, he paled rapidly.

"What is it dearie?" the elderly McGee asked.

"It's the hospital. Timmy and Sarah were just brought in." Mr. McGee said, sounding exceedingly worried and slightly frantic, which was rather out of character for the normally unflappable Naval Officer.

Mrs. McGee blinked in confusion a couple of times before understanding dawned and she raced over to get her purse, not even noticing or caring that she was still dressed in a nightgown and bathrobe. As soon as Mrs. McGee corrected her state of dress, both of the younger McGees were out the door.

As the McGees got into their rental car, two suitcases appeared, one in the second guest bedroom and one by the couch which magically turned itself into a makeshift bed. Now scattered about the living-room of the Victorian home were a number of family photos that had not existed five minutes prior.

As she watched these changes take place, the elder Mrs. McGee smiled. It would seem that someone had taken her up on the old promise she'd made to Blackie when she'd told him "Once a Williamson, always a Williamson.", and later amended it to "McGee" before he moved on when the neighbors started to notice that he'd been around for more than twenty years. Back then, she had told him that if he'd ever stopped being a cat, he'd have a place to stay with her and hers, and it seemed that he was finally taking her up on that.

Blackie, and whoever he'd brought with him, would be good for her grandson. The poor man had grown bitter and cold over the last twenty years that he and his wife had remained childless, and needed someone around to melt his heart just as Blackie had gotten her over those dark and difficult days after she had lost her mother and youngest brother in an accident. He would of course have to get used to his new name but, then again, Thackary Binx had had dozens of names over the past three centuries...


	2. This Can't Be Coincidence

Those who knew Ernie Everett back in his high school stoner days when he'd been going by "Ice" and shaving his nickname into his hair would have been surprised at how his life had turned out since then. How it had ended, with him lying dead in a gutter, would not have been as surprising to them though. Three days of hanging in a cage with nothing to do but wait for rescue after being captured by real life witches can change a man. It had completely destroyed his friend Jay for instance. That change had caused him to turn his life around, culminating in him joining the Navy right out of high school and working his way up the ranks as he married and became a family man.

If life had been more like a fairy tale, Max Dennison who'd been in love with Ernie's wife back during their high school days would have been married to Allison, and she wouldn't have stayed up all night waiting for Ernie, who was finally home on leave, growing increasingly convinced that he was cheating on her until the call came and tore her life apart. Life was not a fairytale, people changed, they grew up and grew apart, and it was a rare few who married their first love and stayed with them throughout the rest of their lives. It is more often than not one's second or third love that one marries, as was the case with Allison and Ernie. After Ernie had cleaned himself up and joined the Navy, he became a much better prospect than the weed-smoking, candy stealing, juvenile delinquent he had been. Allison saw that one day when he returned on leave, and gave him a chance, a chance that led to marriage, kids, a house in the suburbs, and all that stuff.

On the day Lieutenant Everett's life ended, he had left behind a wife and two young sons. Three days after Lieutenant Everett's life ended, a team from the NCIS offices in the Washington Navy Yard turned up to see if his death had been related to a case they had down in D.C., and see if they could give Everett's wife and sons some answers as to why he had died. On that team were Former Marine Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Former Police Detective Anthony DiNozzo, Former Mossad Agent Ziva David, and Former Farmboy Cursed to be a Cat Timothy McGee who had originally been known as Thackery Binx. Of these four, McGee was naturally the least happy to be there, and even less happy to be investigating something he was rapidly beginning to realize had been tied to his previous life as an immortal feline who'd been forced to find any number of ways to communicate before he'd been allowed to talk again on his final night as a cat.

Figuring that his being here in Salem and investigating the death of Ernie of all people couldn't be a coincidence, McGee turned his attention away from the events in D.C. and turned it towards that which connected him to the deceased Lieutenant. His first stop would naturally be the Sanderson Sisters' home which was once again a working museum with gift shop which had remained open this time since he hadn't been there to sabotage things like he had the last time around as he'd waited for the building which was standing due to magic to crumble to dust after nature took its course like it should have.

Max Dennison, who'd bought the property in better times, ran the museum which was now his sole source of income full-time. Fortunately, for the sake of his survival and his chances of making payments on his underwater mortgage, a good number of tourists dropped by and bought kitschy souvenirs each week. Not that Tim had been keeping track...Much.

As DiNozzo, who'd come with him, poked around the museum and laughed at the exhibits, Tim asked Max questions, questions that caused the man to frown as if he were trying to place him. Most people had forgotten the events of that Halloween back in '93, but then again, they'd only been peripherally aware of them if at all. Having a complete stranger come to town and start asking Max about someone who'd been connected to those events must've been disconcerting. Fortunately, after a good two years in California, another seven years in college in Baltimore Maryland and Cambridge Massachusetts, some time in Norfolk, and the last several years in D.C., he'd ditched his seventeenth-century colonial accent which would have immediately given him away.

After Max had answered the questions he'd asked to the best of his abilities, he pretended to poke around the museum despite the fact that he just wanted to get the hell out of here since this place had always made his skin crawl. In fact, he actually had tried to leave as soon as he was done questioning the Dennison boy who was now approaching middle-age but, DiNozzo had needled him until he'd ended up staying long enough to satisfy the senior agent who was nearly three hundred years his junior. When he came to a certain exhibit case that was clean and completely dust free, he frowned.

"Wasn't there a book here?" he asked.

"Yes." Max said, giving him a suspicious look. "But, it was stolen a long time ago."

"What's so important about the book McGeek?" DiNozzo asked him as they left the museum with Max's eyes following them as they did so.

"Aside from the fact that it was several centuries old and extremely valuable?" he replied. "Some people believed that it contained magical spells that actually worked."

DiNozzo snorted at this and made a movie reference that he couldn't quite catch since he wasn't paying attention as they made their way to the car. Despite the fact that he touted himself as being a man of science, that lovely art that was as far from magic as he could get, he wasn't nearly so flippant about this. He'd seen the effects of the spells contained within that book of the black arts firsthand. This was bad, very bad.

In the wrong hands, the book could cause chaos and destruction on an unprecedented scale. In the hands of your everyday witch, the book could cause an incalculable amount of damage. The best anyone could hope for was that the book was in the hands of a slightly less than scrupulous collector who valued it for its rarity rather than what it contained.

&!&!&!&

As agents DiNozzo and McGee drove away, Max turned and went back inside the museum. It couldn't have been a coincidence that they had been here asking about that Navy guy's death. That Navy guy that he hadn't associated with that moron who'd jacked his shoes that eventful Halloween after his family had first arrived in Salem until he'd gone to give his condolences to Allison with whom he'd lost touch over the years. The more timid looking one, McGee, had asked him a number of questions pertaining to that Halloween that very few people knew the truth about.

Amongst the living, it had just been him, Dani, Allison, Jay, and Ernie who'd had any idea of what had really happened that night. The children who'd been ensnared by Sarah Sanderson's magic, the overworked police who'd eventually gotten the children home, and the parents who had danced until dawn at the party at the Town Hall had had no idea what had happened that night and postulated that something had been released into either the air or the water, and eventually forgot all about it as soon as the brief media furor was over.

Now, nearly twenty years later, someone had come knocking and asking about the event. Someone who had known about the existence of the book which had been stolen prior to the museum's re-opening. He had little doubt that the man was with NCIS. What he doubted however was the man's reason for being here, especially after the death of one of the few people who had known about that night, a death that he'd heard had been a mugging gone wrong.

Sighing, he called the Salem Police Department. His sister picked up on the third ring.

"Whaddo ya want Max?" Dani asked.

"I had someone come around asking me some odd questions related to _That Night_." he replied, immediately getting to the point since his sister was undoubtedly busy. "Can you find anything out about a NCIS agent named Timothy McGee?"


	3. A Fate Worse Than Death

Dani Dennison-Smith frowned as she studied the image of the NCIS agent on her computer monitor. There was something about the man that was familiar but, she couldn't quite place his face. Whoever he was, he had known a great deal about things that, aside from the town legend about the Sanderson Sisters and Thackery Binx, hadn't been spoken of in years. Not only that but, the agent had recently come to the station asking for information about Jay Walker who'd been ousted from the drunk tank and released yet again that morning despite the fact that he and his team had come to town to investigate a case that had supposedly been related to a killing that had taken place in D.C..

She didn't know who the hell this McGee fellow was but, she intended to find out, and she planned on keeping tabs on him until he left Salem...

&!&!&!&

The instant Timothy McGee felt that telltale tingle that was like electricity yet not, as it held an oily undertone of pure evil that mere electricity didn't possess, he knew that, rather than going around back to prevent the escape of anyone heading out the back door as planned, he should have gone through the front door firing at anything and everything that moved. Whatever was going on inside that house, it was vital that he got in there to stop it as soon as humanly possible if not sooner before either Tony or Gibbs died, or worse.

The trail that the team had followed as he had investigated Jay who had gone from stealing candy and TPing people's houses to being picked up several times a month on Drunk and Disorderly charges had led them to this nondescript house in the suburbs which was owned by an elderly man who let the delinquent turned waste of space live in a trailer in his driveway despite the number of complaints this had garnered from the neighbors. He should have questioned why that was, and why the man was so willing to bail Jay out of jail every other week considering the fact that the two weren't related, and Jay had nothing to offer him. Nothing to offer except perhaps a certain book that had gone missing more than a decade prior, and his services as an extra member of the man's dark coven that was.

_Twist the bones and bend the back..._

The lead voice and the background chanting coming from an open window were deeper but, they were bringing back flashbacks of that day that had taken place 319 years ago. Abandoning Ziva, he raced around the rest of the house and up to the back door which led into the kitchen of the suburban home.

_Trim him of his baby fat..._

He kicked in the back door and raced into the house already knowing that it was too late and that he'd yet again failed to save someone dear to him. In many ways, it would have been better had the victim of that particular spell had been killed instead.

_Cover him in fur black as black Just. Like. Thissss..._

He entered the living-room of the home which was decorated in occult symbols and numerous other trappings associated with witchcraft as DiNozzo's scream turned into a pained yowl that tore at his ears and his heart. He had come within a hairsbreadth of killing the three men who stood in front of his partner who was now forced to suffer a fate far worse than death. Only the fact that he might not be able to help Tony during the inquiry and the trial that would have followed as the three men weren't armed with mortal weapons had stayed his hand.

Instead of killing them like he dearly wished to do, he shot them in a way that would put them in the I.C.U. before grabbing a still stunned DiNozzo and the book that had been gifted to the Sanderson sisters by the devil himself and getting them the hell out of that house and away from the three male witches. As he stepped out of the house, he realized that he couldn't see Gibbs who had gone around the front with DiNozzo. In a near panic, he set DiNozzo and the book down on the front lawn.

"Guard the book." he said as he raced back into the house afraid of what he would find.

Fortunately, when he returned to the house, all he found was an unconscious Gibbs who looked to have been beaned with a candle holder while he and Ziva had been cautiously sneaking along the side of the house ready to catch anyone he and/or Tony might've chased outside. Why they hadn't tried to ensorcel Gibbs as well as Tony, he didn't know. It was entirely possible that they needed a living sacrifice for whatever the hell they had been planning to pull off that day, and had thought that they might have been able to finish whatever they'd had planned before anyone arrived to see why Gibbs and DiNozzo weren't reporting in.

He stayed by Gibbs' side as Ziva covered the three witches until the first ambulance arrived. As soon as Gibbs was secure and out of harm's way, he remembered Tony and the book and realized how monumentally stupid that had been, especially considering the fact that neither of them were where he'd left them when he returned to look for them.

&!&!&!&

Dani felt torn as she watched the poor cat run off after having squirmed out of her arms despite her repeated assurances that she would protect him for however long it took until the curse on him ended and that her children's children's children would protect him if need be. She'd known the instant she'd laid eyes on the cat that had been unceremoniously dumped onto Mr. McAlister's front lawn along with a book she'd prayed she'd never have to set eyes on again that it had been no ordinary cat. She didn't entirely know what the formerly human NCIS Agent's relation to the book and the mysterious agent McGee who shouldn't know the things he did was but, she had been willing to protect the poor man with her life until she learned whether or not it should be otherwise. It was possible however that the mysterious agent McGee could protect his partner better than she could but, she somehow doubted it since anyone who had any interest in that book had to be up to no good.

As she watched from her place by the patrol cars, the feline that an hour earlier had been a NCIS agent walked up to Agent McGee who slumped in relief the instant he saw him. McGee then bent down, picked the cat up and scratched him in a precise spot behind his right ear.

"Don't ask me how I know." Agent McGee said as he carried his partner to one of the NCIS vehicles despite the looks of confusion that the female NCIS agent was giving him.

Something about what the agent had said and done and how he'd reacted to the fact that his partner had been turned into a cat had struck her as being highly significant somehow but, she couldn't figure out why. A memory that was tied to _that night _seemed to be trying to surface but, it seemed to be caught half-way. Despite the fact that she would remember the incident with the Sanderson sisters to the day she died, she couldn't remember _everything_ about that incident. Honestly, the only reason she knew exactly what she'd been wearing that night had been because of the picture that her mother had taken of her, dad, and Max before they went trick-or-treating.

She would do her best to remember whatever it was she was forgetting. Whatever she was trying to remember was apparently tied to this, and might hold the key to returning the NCIS agent to his true form if that were at all possible, or at the very least hold the key to getting retribution against those who had placed such an evil curse on the poor man whose fate would more than likely remain unknown in this day and age where magic was regarded as superstition and nonsense that belonged in fantasy novels not real life. It was unfortunately more than likely that there would be no hope for the unfortunate Agent DiNozzo, but there might be a ray of hope. Thackery Binx had turned into a ghost after the curse on him had ended but, Thackery had been three-hundred and fifteen or sixteen years old at that point.


	4. A Slow Evening

DiNozzo squirmed in McGee's arms on the way to the motel where they were staying while they were in Salem. Something about this situation was strange. Okay, everything about the situation was so far off the weirdness charts that one would need a map and a compass to find them again, but McGee's reaction was strange nonetheless.

Not only had McGee not been shocked by the sight of him being turned into a cat, he had almost acted as if it were normal. The thing he'd seemed most upset about was the fact that the book had been lost.

"Okay, give me everything you can about the person who took the book." McGee said as he opened his laptop in front of him and opened a Word document.

The letters on the keys seemed to swim before him, but he finally processed what his feline eyes which had skewed everything and appeared to be focused more on movement than anything were seeing. Uncertainly, he reached for the W and pressed down on it.

_wwwwwwwhhhhhaaaattt tthe hell mcgeek _he typed after a bit of effort, the shift key seemingly beyond him for the moment, as his body was centered around an entirely different center of gravity and trying to use the shift key had him practically standing on the laptop's keyboard.

"It's a long story that we frankly don't have time to go into. We need to find that book and fast before some really bad things happen. Things that are far far worse than being turned into a cat." McGee said from by the phone, the receiver in one hand, and his finger jabbing a five.

He glared at the Probie, demanding answers with every fibre of his being, but despite his best glare, no answers were forthcoming. The Probie kept dialing, ignoring the glare that was drilling into his back.

"Emily, I'm in Salem right now." McGee said into the phone when whoever he was calling picked up. "No, it wasn't by choice... No, the Sanderson sisters haven't come back to life... I'm currently safe, but everyone is in danger by this point... We ran into some warlocks and DiNozzo got turned into a cat, but aside from that, the rest of the team is safe... No, the reason I'm calling you is to tell you to hide because I lost _The Book_... I took it from the warlocks, and lost it while Gibbs was being loaded onto an ambulance. No, it's not that bad, he was just knocked out, he'll be fine in a day or two..."

_who's emily _he typed when the Probie finally hung up.

"My sister." McGee replied.

_your sister's name is sarah _he typed.

"It was originally Emily, before we were...adopted by the McGees." McGee replied.

That threw him for a bit of a loop. According to everything he'd heard, McProbie wasn't adopted.

_part of the long story _he typed.

"Yes." McGee said with a sigh. Part of the reason he didn't get along with his "father" was because on some level, the man knew he wasn't really his son, and it made him unsure of how to deal with the interloper that all of his other instincts that were borne from the memories he'd been given were screaming was his. Emily, lovable little Emily who had been of a more adoptable age and whom just about everyone who met her could love hadn't had such problems with their new parents, as they had been more accepting of her as she was a child rather than a nearly grown young man.

&!&!&!&!&

As Ziva sat beside the bed where Gibbs was being kept overnight for observation, she frowned. McGee's behavior after the events of the afternoon had been rather unusual to say the least. Rather than helping the local law enforcement out in the search for DiNozzo who'd gone missing, the young agent had gone back to the motel carrying a cat that he'd picked up somewhere. This was highly unusual for the young man who would normally do everything in his power to help out a member of the team, and would normally stop at nothing to get them back should they go missing.

Instead of running around Salem or at the very least hacking into any and every database that might contain information on the three men that McGee had shot after they'd attacked Gibbs and somehow been responsible for DiNozzo's inexplicable disappearance, McGee was by all accounts hanging around his motel room playing with the cat that he had found.

When Gibbs was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, she would be having words with the man. You did not abandon a comrade in need, no matter how many pranks they pulled on you over the years, and how many names they called you.

&!&!&!&

Back in McGee's motel room, McGee swore as he read what Tony had typed. Apparently, that cop that he'd spotted hanging around nearby as Gibbs was being loaded into the ambulance had taken the book and had attempted to take DiNozzo as well. DiNozzo hadn't been able to read the name on her uniform, so he didn't have a name to go with what little he could remember seeing since he couldn't rely on the vague description that had been all Tony could give because he hadn't yet gotten used to his feline senses. All he really knew to look for was a female officer who may or may not have actually been a police officer with brown hair.

Noticing that Tony looked tired, he scratched him behind the ear as a reward for trying as hard as he had and said "You should get some sleep. You're going to need more of it now you're a cat.". As if that had been the permission that he'd been waiting for, Tony went over to the other side of the bed, curled up into a ball, and fell asleep within seconds of doing so.

Though he was tempted, McGee refrained from petting him. He'd never be able to live that down if...when DiNozzo was returned to normal.


	5. Food

Tony sniffed the air when he awoke. There was something nearby that his brain was telling him was meat, but it smelled odd in a way he couldn't describe. Of course, he couldn't quite find the words to describe even half the things he smelled now that he was a cat. It was almost like his nose had been stuffed with cotton balls all his life, and they'd just been removed to reveal a world of unfamiliar and quite often rank odors.

Stretching to get the kinks out of his back since he'd been sleeping curled up in a tiny ball with his nose practically pressed against his ass which also smelled, he padded over to where McGeek was sitting at the end of the bed.

"I got you a burger." McGee said. "I'm not sure how much you'll like it though, since I never really appreciated them until I was human again. Of course, most of mine were picked out of the trash..."

What the hell had McGee been doing eating out of the trash, and what did he mean by human again?

He would've pondered those questions further, but his stomach gave a rumble and informed him that he was very hungry. Following the odd meat smell, he found a burger that was larger than his current head sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Pouncing on it, he took a bite...

Bleargh. What the hell was this? It looked like a burger, but it tasted greasy and foul, and something he couldn't describe. He'd spit it out if he could, but apparently cats weren't made that way.

That was another thing he was getting used to now that he was awake and supposedly not in shock, and he still wasn't certain that it wasn't a hallucination of some sort that McGee or hallucination McGee was playing along with. How could someone become a cat?

As he backed away from the evil burger thing, McGee chuckled.

"I didn't like cooked meat all that much either." McGee said "But, I figured you'd try to kill me if I put the cat food out first."

Again, what the hell was McGeek talking about? It almost sounded as if he'd been turned into a cat before.

"So, seeing as I know you're not going to want mice since you've been raised in the 20th century and never faced starvation, what'll it be? Wet or dry?" McGee asked as he held up a small brightly colored sack that looked weird with his skewed color perception and a small tin.

He made a low growling noise in his throat. He may not like burgers in his new four-legged shape, but that didn't mean that he was going to be diving into the Meow Mix.

"Tuna it is then." McGee said as he opened the tin that reeked of fish and metal and emptied it out on a plate.

Curious, he went over and sniffed the contents of the plate.

"It's just tuna DiNozzo." McGee said.

Hoping that he wasn't chowing down on Fancy Feast, he went and took a bite, then another, and another...

* * *

Timothy who'd once been known as Thackary, and Blackie, Fluffy, Sooty, Hell-Beast, That Damn Cat, and Shoo! watched his friend eat. He had been tempted to open a can of wet food, but he knew that DiNozzo was still rather firmly attached to his humanity and wouldn't appreciate it, so he'd opened a can of tuna instead. He himself had gone through an adjustment phase after he'd been turned into a cat, so he had some idea what Tony was going through. He'd started off on birds himself before he'd finally gave in and ate rodents during that first hard Winter during which he'd discovered that as well as being a cat, he couldn't die.

For three-hundred years he'd been a cat, and then suddenly he'd found that rather than going to the afterlife to be with his family he had to adjust to being a human being again. He didn't entirely know what had brought him and his sister back to life after he'd stepped off the grounds of the cemetery and joined her, and there were times that he feared it because it had occurred off of hallowed ground. There were times when he feared that his return to life was not God's will, not a reward for what he had been forced to suffer through, and compensation to his sister for a life unnaturally taken too soon. There were times where he feared that he'd be shot or hit by a car and learn that he was cursed to walk the Earth for all eternity, this time in the shape of a man.

In the early days, when people would look at him like he was a stranger before blinking and suddenly knowing him as "Timothy McGee" whom they'd known for years, he'd felt like throwing up each time it happened as something like that strongly smacked of the Dark Arts. The only thing that had kept him from running or trying to see if he could actually die this time had been Agatha. The young girl who had turned into a canny old woman had told him that he and his sister were a blessing, the blessing her grandson and his wife had waited twenty years to receive. She had begged him to melt her grandson's heart which had grown cold and hard over the years, and had begged him to be the son the man had been praying for.

Though he probably should have, he hadn't found it in his heart to refuse, just as he hadn't found it in his heart to leave a young girl who needed someone to be there for her alone. He may not have entirely succeeded in his task, especially since he did not get along with the man all that well, but the older McGee was no-longer as frigid as he had been before, and the woman he now called Mother didn't have that look of hopelessness in her eyes which had faded every time she saw Emily back in the beginning when every few minutes the McGees would blink and a new memory that hadn't been there before slotted into place.

There were times when he felt like a terrible fraud, but he owed it to Agatha who had watched her family just about rip itself apart before he and Emily had arrived.

Now, he was going to have to look after DiNozzo. Whether this would have happened to the young man or not if he'd gone to his eternal rest like he should have was debatable. But, with someone who had gone through the experience before by his side, his friend should be able to adapt to the situation better than he would have should it be found that things couldn't be reversed with the final extermination of the witches who had turned him into a cat.

* * *

DiNozzo swallowed the last mouthful of tuna on the plate. Now that the needs of his stomach had been met, he was better able to focus on certain oddities. Namely how a certain Elflord was far too calm and accepting of the situation, and how said Elflord had spoken of not being human. Noting that the laptop from earlier was open and so was the Word program, he went over to it.

**ttttalk mcgeek **he typed.

McGee sighed.

"It all started about three-hundred and twenty years ago..." McGee said, launching into a tale of a young Pilgrim boy and three witches.


End file.
